All posts tagged Transportation

Ford Motor Co. Chief Executive Alan Mulally is in the nation’s capital Tuesday for what company officials are calling a routine visit with government officials.

Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally (AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)

But make no mistake: The Detroit auto maker is mounting an aggressive campaign to shape several major policy issues affecting the auto industry.

Ford, alone among the Detroit three in not needing a government bailout, has been increasingly vocal in opposing efforts by environmental groups to mandate a 62 miles per gallon average fuel economy for all cars by 2025. The No. 2 U.S. auto maker by sales is also trying to ensure that efforts to reduce distracted driving don’t lump in certain car technologies that it says actually improve vehicle safety. One example is Ford’s Sync, a hands-free system that allows drivers to access the radio and their cell phones without letting go of the steering wheel.

Mr. Mulally will meet with “government officials” Tuesday, including some lawmakers, said Christin Tinsworth Baker, a D.C.-based Ford spokeswoman. “He is here for regular check-in meetings with government officials where he will underscore the importance of American manufacturing to the U.S. economy and Ford’s plan to hire 7,000 American workers over the next two years,” she said in an email. Read More »

Motorists who roll up lots of miles can relax, for now. The Obama administration is disavowing the idea of instituting a tax based on miles driven following a flurry of speculation that lit up the blogosphere earlier this month.

A document obtained by Transportation Weekly and quickly spread around the web outlined a proposal to create a “Surface Transportation Revenue Alternatives Office,” that would analyze “a range of revenue-generating alternatives that could convey prices to users to reflect system use and other travel externalities while serving as a funding source for surface transportation programs.”

Translation: The new office would study how much money the government could raise for road building if it taxed motorists based on how much they drive.

The idea of taxing motorists based on “vehicle miles traveled,” sometimes called a VMT tax, has been kicking around in transportation policy circles for some time. The reason is concerns that over the long haul gasoline taxes won’t yield enough money to finance all the road and mass transit projects that federal, state and local governments believe are needed. Electric cars, for example, use the roads but wouldn’t pay a gas tax to help maintain them… Read More »

The House of Representatives voted unanimously for legislation that would make it a federal crime to point a laser at an aircraft or in its flight path.

Under the measure, which passed on a voice vote, violators would face up to five years in prison.

The House bill, sponsored by Rep. Daniel Lungren (R., Calif.), is designed to crack down on a practice that pilots say threatens to impede their vision, particularly during takeoffs and landings. The largest U.S. pilots union has pushed for the legislation.

No aircraft crashes have been reported due to people pointing lasers from the ground, but federal aviation regulators reported earlier this year that laser incidents involving all types of aircraft have doubled in the U.S. to 2,800 last year from the previous year.

The Senate passed a similar measure last month as part of a broader bill dealing with aviation regulation. For the measure to clear Congress, the Senate would have to take up the House bill as standalone legislation. Read More »

President Barack Obama used a White House meeting with governors on Monday to defend his calls for increased spending on education, research and roads.

President Barack Obama addresses governors in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, Monday. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Standing before some of his toughest critics, the president sought to blunt criticism of his new health-care law by offering governors the chance to develop their own systems provided they meet two major requirements: cover as many people as the Obama plan at the same or lower cost.

Mr. Obama made his pitch as congressional Republicans seek deep cuts in federal spending and newly elected Republicans governors wage standoffs with statehouse Democrats over the rights of unionized state employees. The president gears up for his own re-election against this backdrop that serves to highlight differences between the two parties… Read More »

Most Americans support more investment in highways, bridges and transit systems but are solidly opposed to raising the national gasoline tax as a funding option, according to a national survey released by the Rockefeller Foundation.

(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

The study helps explain the impasse in Washington as President Barack Obama calls for transportation investments: Many lawmakers agree on the need for more highway spending but are averse to taking politically risky steps to raise funding.

The survey was conducted jointly by Hart Research Associates and Public Opinion Strategies between Jan. 29 and Feb. 6, and has a 3.1 percentage point margin of error.

Seven in 10 said they wanted elected leaders to seek compromise, rather than hold fast to their position, on legislation for transportation infrastructure. That’s a higher portion than those who urged compromise in addressing the federal budget deficit, tax cuts, entitlements and other issues.

Two-thirds of respondents–including majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents–said that improving transportation infrastructure is “important.” And 80% agreed that federal funding to improve and modernize transportation systems would boost local economies and create jobs… Read More »

The Senate voted 98-0 Tuesday to outlaw the distribution of sometimes-revealing images from airport body scanners, hoping to make travelers a little less squeamish about the contentious screening requirements.

The Transportation Security Administration rules that require enhanced pat downs or full-body scans for flyers created a small uproar this past holiday travel season, as some travelers thought the screenings were invasive.

The scans are deleted immediately after a traveler clears security, and the TSA has promised the under-the-clothes pictures will be kept private.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D., Neb.), the measure’s sponsor, said that’s not enough. “If passing laws or directives assured compliance there would be no speeders in America,” Mr. Nelson said last week. “What we need are additional consequences to make anyone considering keeping, storing or transmitting these scanned images think twice about the fact they will be committing a felony.”

TSA employees who take body scan images home could face fines and up to a year in prison under the amendment to the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization bill. The bill still has to clear the House. Read More »

Deficit hawks haven’t clipped the wings of the Department of Homeland Security. Its discretionary budget would increase 0.7% to $43.2 billion under the spending blueprint issued today by the Obama administration.

A passenger passes through a full body scanner at O’Hare International Airport. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

One area the administration is eager to expand: Airport security, including more of the full-body scanners that have proven a ligthning rod with certain sections of the traveling public. Partly in response to the uproar over the new scanners, the Transportation Security Administration has started testing new software for the machines that creates a generic, rather than graphic, image.

The budget request includes $77 million for an additional 275 full-body scanners (that’s $280,000 a pop), bringing the total number of scanners to be installed in U.S. airports at the end of the year to 1,275.

The administration’s budget will also up the ante on a different kind of airport security: Behavioral Detection Officers, or agents who are trained to spot abnormal behavior even before passengers get to the checkpoint.

The budget request includes $237 million to expand the program inside of big airports and broaden it out to some smaller airports. The whole program came under fire last year after a report from the Government Accountability Office found flaws in the way the program was conceived and put into practice, concluding “A scientific consensus does not exist on whether behavior detection principles can be reliably used for counterterrorism purposes.” Read More »

Rep. Fred Upton, the new Republican chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is circulating a list of his priorities for the new Congress. Among them, the Michigan lawmaker wants to beat back Democrats’ calls for legislation that would allow tougher penalties on auto makers for safety defects.

The document says Congress’s response last year to accidents involving Toyota Motor Corp. vehicles was “overblown,” and that lawmakers should also rein in federal environmental regulators and spending on renewable energy.

The six-page document, prepared by Mr. Upton’s aides, also calls for investigating the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate a controversial form of natural-gas drilling, known as fracking, and suggests Republicans may seek spending cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services.

The document states that Republicans “have a host of questions” about the efficacy of federal spending on renewable energy technology, and intend to withhold more money until their questions are “comprehensively answered.”… Read More »

As gubernatorial candidates, Republicans Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio campaigned hard against federal stimulus money for high-speed rail projects in their states, dismissing it as useless big-government spending that would cost their states much more in the long run than the job gains they’d see in the short run.

Both men won. Today, they faced the consequences.

The Department of Transportation yanked $1.2 billion from Wisconsin and Ohio high-speed rail efforts and redirected it to other states that want to move forward, especially California, which got half that money, $624 million. Unlike the voters of those two Midwestern states, Californians elected a Democrat, Jerry Brown, as their next governor.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was unapologetic.

“Both gubernatorial candidates, now governors-elect, told us they weren’t going to spend that money as the law is written,” he said. “And if grants that are obligated to places that aren’t going to use them as the law intends, then we will give that money to places that will use it as the law intends.”

Mr. Walker had said the $810 million allocated to Wisconsin should be reallocated to other infrastructure projects in his state. The high-speed rail link from Milwaukee to Madison would have given his state just 55 permanent jobs once it was built, but it cost $15 million a year to run it… Read More »

Nick Calio, the head of global government affairs for Citigroup, is leaving to head the Air Transport Association, the domestic airline industry’s main trade group.

His decision comes as companies and trade groups are reorganizing after Republicans seized control of the U.S. House and picked up six Senate seats in the midterm elections earlier this month.

Mr. Calio, who led the White House Office of Legislative Affairs under former President George H. W. Bush and his son, George W. Bush, joins former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating and former Idaho Gov. Dick Kempthorne as the latest Republican to take a top job at a major Washington-based trade organization. Mr. Keating left the American Council of Life Insurers earlier this month to head the American Bankers Association, the top trade group for commercial banks. Mr. Kempthorne, a former U.S. senator who also led the Department of the Interior during George W. Bush’s last years in the White House, succeeds Mr. Keating at ACLI, the top trade group for life insurers… Read More »

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